"Ah, why does a monstrous alien vagina flash on the screen before the actual article starts resolving?"

“While we can, at this time, confirm the rumours that the Uncyclomedia Foundation has been contaminated with parasitic worms, we continue to urge you to buy products from the Uncyclomedia Foundation.”~ Oscar Wilde on Uncyclomedia Foundation

Contents

The Uncyclomedia Foundation was founded in 2005 by Oscar Wilde to preserve the wisdom of man against the coming darkness, which he predicted using the science of psycho-Art History. His mission was a simple one: "Imagine a world in which every single person has free access to the sum of all human stupidity forced upon them. That is what we are doing."

After his death, control of the family business was turned over to Chronarion, as specified in Wilde's will. Due to his long tenure, many of Oscar Wilde's original writings can still be found in Uncyclopedia today.

History

After its humble beginnings in the family woodshed, the Foundation published The Journal of Uncyclopedian Studies for nearly two centuries on a quarterly basis until 2008. When Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, Wilde declared his work was done and no human would want for irony again.

In 1998, Chronarion inherited the family fortune and pledged to revive the Wildean dream in the dark and McIrony-plagued days of the Dot-Com Revolution. He hired Lara "Stillwaters" Sanger as editor-in-chief for a professional team of twenty-two comedy writers to work through a seven-level review process to create the single funniest compendium of information on Earth, to be called Oldedia and given away on the Internet. After seven years and twenty-two million dollars in cocaine, they had almost 22 very, very funny words about Oprah, kitten huffing and assorted stoner humor. Certainly funny on enough cocaine.

Around this time, Stillwaters suggested making it a wiki instead, since the coke dust was starting to clog the servers. Inspired by the sound of professional humorists talking so fast their teeth started melting and dribbling down their chins, she came up with a name based on a single wheel spinning faster and faster, but wrote it down so fast that no-one could actually read her writing. And so Uncyclopedia was started in Chesterbrook, PA, in January 2005, hosted on some site to do with fortune-telling or something.

Empire-I-Phones, advertised in The Journal of Uncyclopedian Studies, no. 1, April 1860.

The wiki was launched to great acclaim, particularly a few months later when the British discovered it and proceeded to fill it with humour, rather than humor. At which point the Americans didn't understand it any more. But they could imitate the more obvious riffs and donate money to PBS to show more of it, so that was okay.

The wiki was briefly hosted by Wikia. After fighting off a hostile take-over bid by rival Wikipedia, Chronarion again sought a safe haven for their maverick publication. After much searching, he finally found the perfect place: Wikia. As his father and mentor often said:

The Ferrari Enzo he got out of the deal also helped greatly in alleviating the pain of loss of corporate control.

Stillwaters now has a lucrative niche on the lecture circuit where she details to crowds of economically threatened professional humor (and humour) writers how she invented the Uncyclopedia model, how she personally steered it through its early days, how it would not be what it is without her, how it provably sucks and is irreversibly doomed, and how she is working on a deal with a UFO-riding venture capitalist to produce a non-wiki collaborative humor site that will be much funnier. Oh yes. It will.

How it works

The Uncyclopedia collaborative process.

Uncyclomedia is powered by either a Stormtroopers vs. Red Shirts Device or a Cat-Toast Device. People harvest Untatoes to power the servers of Uncyclomedia since they are the most environmentally friendly batteries around. That way, no power outage can occur if the power lines are snapped by a timbered tree.

Ninja Pirates send confusion particles out to the PCs of Internet users. The users read about Goa Tse, Rocky Mountain Oysters or cancer porn and cry real tears of horror and shame, which later (step 5) prime their brains to be driven into complete denial and blackout.

Chronarion abuses the money rightfully gathered for his Ferrari Fund to bribe the Ninja Pirates to gather more confusion particles.

Chronarion sends the coagulated confusion particles out to the PCs of confused Internet users.

The users hear Brad, Todd and Codeine reading out the most horrifyingly Burroughsian material imaginable in the dulcet and comforting tones of a wholesome 1950s radio announcer. This drives their brain into a humor-induced grand mal seizure, followed by a fugue in which they put all their money into envelopes and send it to the Uncyclomedia Foundation for Chron's Ferrari Fund. This money is then misappropriated to bribe Ninja Pirates, and the cycle starts again.

This is roughly translated as "Uncyclopedia is good for the people, but people are good for the Uncyclopedia." This may be interpreted as meaning that Uncyclopedia will not eat people. Run for your life!

UnNews

The news source on crack!™ spreads misinformation and cons the public into swallowing it hook-line-and-sinker (and worm), by guilefully making it resemble authentic news articles. UnNews stories use satire to ensure the most unfair and biased reporting possible.

The Foundation board

The Foundation board and internal mailing lists work according to time-honoured principles of international organisation, nonprofit management and volunteer motivation.

Native English speakers are Americocentric cultural imperialists. (Even if they're from New Zealand.)

All stereotypes about the French are true. All of them.

The British hate the Americans, but they hate the French much more. The French return the favour.

Romanians are grievously insulted by the continued existence of Cyrillic characters.

Every street corner in the former Yugoslavia gets its own language Uncyclopedia.

The Japanese only appear to write in en-1. It's actually the en-3 they craim.

If you point out to a Dutch user that they have a user ID number, you may as well be putting them into a Nazi concentration camp.

Assume good faith!

CitizUnDium

After the UFO-riding venture capitalist ran out of money to pay her, Stillwaters set to work on this spork of a spork of Uncyclopedia, in which the contents of Uncyclopedia are sifted by expert academic humorists* (think of your cat tray and that shovel that lets the litter through and traps the solids) and run through several more layers of review before being arrested by one of the "Constables."

Editors are known as "Citizens," where "citizen" is defined as "holding a four-year bachelor's degree or higher." Those not meeting this requirement are known as "UnPersons" and are assigned to duties in the engine room and sewers.

The discussion mailing list was shut down after people actually started discussing the project on it, as this was completely contrary to Stillwaters' original vision. It was replaced by the current web-based discussion forum, which requires Etch-A-Sketch 9.1 (or higher) to access.

* So far they've asked Tom Lehrer, who looked at them funny. It appears cocaine isn't that popular with academics.